Pulsar&rsquo;s new variant, to be unveiled next week, will retain the looks of a big bike, but the engine will be 135 cc.

High on looks, low on power

Business Standard

Sony VAIO X hopes to corner 20% share in the consumer notebook market.

The power of size zero

Renu Modi celebrates twenty years of life as a gallerist with an ambitious show, a glimpse of what lies ahead, and a wish to return to the hearth.

Return of the housewife

As a child, after seeing a chicken being carried to its doom behind a butcher&rsquo;s shop, I stopped eating non-vegetarian food. This enchanted phase lasted for 10 or so days, and then I was back to what the family called The Good Life. As an adult I&rsquo;ve successfully resisted the temptation to convert, though I briefly considered it after reading Eric Schlosser&rsquo;s description of the beef-making process in Cogs in the Great Machine and after watching Georges Franju&rsquo;s 1949 documentary Le Sang des b&ecirc;tes (Blood of the Beasts), an almost unbearably impassive look at what goes on inside the slaughterhouses of Paris. The film was made in black-and-white, which was the only reason I could keep my eyes on the screen from beginning to end; but even the most hardened non-vegetarian has to feel squeamish about the scenes showing calves being decapitated and strong, proud horses being reduced to twitching carcasses by stun-guns, before they are casually bled.

'Tis meat?

The Lion of Lahore earns an exhaustive if naive new biography. Aayush Soni compares man and myth.

Frontier fast-food

Temsula Ao&rsquo;s latest offering, a collection of eight stories, strikes a chord with their universality, even though seven of them are set within the Naga community. The simplicity of the language hides the complexity of emotions and themes she has written about, and the stories linger on long after the pages have been turned and the book closed.

Tales from troubled times

As with all the bad news from Iraq and Af-Pak, sooner or later the bad news on the climate acquires a stultifying sameness. Only when a surge is in sight &mdash; troop surge, storm surge &mdash; does one&rsquo;s news radar jolt awake momentarily. The cause of this deadened state is not an unassimilable surfeit of information, rather, it is a shortage of the right sort of information. Despite the barrage of news and opinion, we don&rsquo;t know enough to figure out what the right questions are. Without that foundation, our knowledge rests on a bog, into which it is liable to settle with a gentle burp or two of greenhouse gas (or, hot air).

Cool head in Eden

Architect Arun Rewal&rsquo;s factory for designers Hemant Sagar and Didier Lecoanet blends tradition and modernity.

A fashion statement

Ceramists and studio potters from all over the world come together to celebrate the humble kulhar.

Down to earth

Where would you go to see the range of artistic achievement in Europe from the reign of the Emperor Constantine to the age of Shakespeare? It&rsquo;s a tough query, though one answer is the Victoria &amp; Albert Museum in London.

Masterpieces everywhere

A couple of years ago, when Land Rover first launched the Freelander, they went on an advertising offensive. A commercial called Born Free, produced by WCRS London, brought out the Freelander&rsquo;s true identity &mdash; of a vehicle that wasn&rsquo;t just a boulevard cruiser or a soft-roader.

Land of the Free

Apropos nothing whatsoever, I had a termite infestation in my house the other day &mdash; rather, my house-mate Toto did. In the middle of us having a chat in his room, he noticed that some of his books were listing strangely to one side, went to investigate and jumped three feet in the air as he discovered a colony of termites merrily digesting his J Krishnamurtis and Sigmund Freuds. &ldquo;At least they have good taste&rdquo; I said, trying to inject some levity.

Weekly fix

I want a new car in the range of Rs 7-11 lakh. My requirements are ample rear legroom, as most of my family members are on the taller side, ABS, good fuel efficiency (diesel is preferable), a well-designed dashboard, rear seat comfort and good interiors. I will be driving the car for around 1000 km every week and have shortlisted the Chevrolet Optra Magnum, Ford Fiesta, Hyundai Verna and Fiat Linea.

Magnum opus

Kolkata&rsquo;s citizens decide not to wait for the government and do it themselves.

People's war on garbage

Perhaps it was Bill Buford who started it, back in 2006 with his food memoir, Heat. &ldquo;I was home and wanted a pig,&rdquo; he writes disarmingly. He finds one, in New York City, and brings it back to his apartment &mdash; a &ldquo;definitively dead&rdquo; 225-pound animal, wrapped in a transparent plastic sheet &mdash; braving his neighbours&rsquo; fear and loathing.

Butcher the thought

A kitchen for Rs 1 crore? House-proud Indians can now choose from a host of modular kitchen brands that cost that much, or more.

Stir it up in style

The market is, today, flooded with smart phones. These phones, mind you, are &ldquo;smart&rdquo;, and are not named so just because they look &ldquo;smart&rdquo;, or because they have a few unique features. But even a smart phone becomes truly &ldquo;smart&rdquo;, that is, the ultimate device for information, communication and entertainment, only when you actually load the applications created especially for them.

Fully loaded

Quarterfinals at the World Cup. Just five of the top ten seeds are still in contention. Gelfand (No:1) is tied with Jakovenko (9) while Ponomariov (7) is tied with Gashimov (2) after the first game. Svidler (3) appears to be on his way out against Malakhov (22) and Karjakin (12) looks set to eliminate Mamedaryov (13) after Malakov and Pono won their first games.

CHESS #616

The little old lady at the caf&eacute; had typical little old lady hair, scraggly but dignified, and little old lady eyes &mdash; at once beady and gentle. She was wearing a skirt and a puffy coat and shiny black little old lady shoes. She had a little old lady bag from which she periodically pulled out various little old lady pouches full of little old lady stuff (glasses, tissues, bright blue cell phone, assorted unidentifiables). Her collapsed little old lady mouth shone with a quite classy shade of pearly pink, and her general care over her appearance was of the kind that little old ladies take who might have been head-turners in their day.

Solitaire

Premium skin care brand Kaya Skin Clinic contributes just 7 per cent to Marico&rsquo;s bottom line. And Chariman Harsh Mariwala believes Kaya needs to clock a turnover of Rs 400 crore before it becomes a viable venture. The current turnover is just half of that at Rs 200 crore.

Kaya's new face

Vodafone&rsquo;s much talked about Zoozoos were in the news again. This time round it was thanks to a merchandising tie-up with Shoppers Stop. Now Zoozoo fans had the opportunity to bring the fictional, winsome characters back into their lives, as a part of their apparel and attitude. Thinking back to the release of the Vodafone Campaign during the IPL, the response and stir created seemed almost unprecedented. By the time the first few ads were on air, Zoozoos had mutated from television screens to laptop wallpapers, editorial features, mobile screen savers and facebook wall posts and fan pages. The campaign managed to convert consumers into fansumers, i.e. endorsers and subscribers to the brand.

Resurgence of the brand mascot

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